How Much is Too Much?

[rolanni]

Today's question for the group mind: How much editing is Enough; how much is Too Much; and d'ye ever crave more?

kinzel and I are ...fortunate, I suppose the word is... in generally being edited lightly. This comes with its own set of terrors, of course, and it's not at all unknown for us to impose upon friends to beta-read our latest novel and ask them to Do Their Worst.

However, out there in ListWorld, I've been reading tales from writers -- many of them multi-published authors who clearly know what they're doing -- whose editors edit their proposals, to the extent of not letting them continue on what I consider to be the Real Work -- that would be, writing the book -- until the proposal is up to the editor's standard. This seems beyond foolish to me, but what do I know? My feelings about proposals are ambiguous at best.

Comments

[ctate.livejournal.com]

[Digressing for a moment into specific critique: I agree that your characterizations are usually very good indeed; that's why certain ... variations bothered me so much in I Dare. My problem wasn't who the characters were, but rather that they were not consistently portrayed.]

Is it never the editor's job to say "this isn't ready; fix it"? I would have (naively?) thought that the single most important difference between self-publishing and not.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Is it never the editor's job to say "this isn't ready; fix it"?

Sure it is. But the editor's name doesn't go on the book, and our book is only One of Many that a particular editor is responsible for. Though I'm sure conscientious editors try to give equal time to all their children, the reality is that books which are Good Enough will get less attention than books that Really Need Help, and High Profile books.